


Trigger Happiness

by Monyas



Series: Bad Scoping Mechanisms [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Armor Kink, BAMF Bucky Barnes, M/M, Protective Bucky Barnes, Roomba Army of Doom - Freeform, Social Media
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 09:04:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21205721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Monyas/pseuds/Monyas
Summary: There was a file somewhere in the Shield archives that contained the profile assessment for one Tony Stark. On the last page, the addendum 'Ironman: Yes - Tony Stark: Not Recommended' was stated like it was some kind of universal truth. Someone, however, had scratched out the second half of the sentence with a solid black marker and wrote in the most aggressive vintage cursive: 'Tony Stark: Yes. So much yes. All the yes.'-In which Tony Stark indulges his biggest fan and Bucky is living the dream.-





	Trigger Happiness

There was a file somewhere in the Shield archives that contained the profile assessment for one Tony Stark. On the last page, the addendum 'Ironman: Yes - Tony Stark: Not Recommended' was stated like it was some kind of damning fact. Someone, however, had scratched out the second half of the sentence with a solid black marker and wrote in the most aggressive vintage cursive: 'Tony Stark: Yes. So much yes. All the yes.'

***

Bucky was a buzz of nervous energy, which was to be expected considering the absolute rollercoaster of an afternoon he had just experienced, running around the lab like some clueless intern while trying to help with the heavy lifting as Tony went ahead and created a whole new element. He had been on the verge of being overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of their project at one point or another because the stakes were astronomically high but, seriously, a whole new element.

How _cool_ was that.

And yet he was standing stock still in trepidation because, sure, he had known about the Iron Man armor for a while now, on the cover of newspapers, as quick flashes on TV and blurry scenes on the house's security feeds (which he totally didn't watch on repeat, ahem). There just hadn't been a need for Tony to be in the armor when he had Bucky always around to protect him instead. The very concept of a high-tech weaponized flying suit of armor was surreal enough that Bucky had not actually connected the mental image of Iron Man with the person operating it from the inside, with _Tony_, until the very moment the new core had settled inside the arc reactor and they had both breathed a sigh of relief that tasted vaguely like coconuts.

Which now left Bucky watching Tony in awed disbelief.

Tony, wearing one of his most form-fitting and elegant of tailored suits, was stepping into the armor's assembly line like some kind of engineering deity. Bucky felt like he was experiencing a religious experience, a prophetic revelation of sorts. He couldn't help the little exhale of admiration as dozens of gleaming metallic parts clicked into place seamlessly. Bucky could barely see a glimpse of the internal gears whirring into life in the most complicated mechanical assembly he had ever seen, before the internal machinery got covered by perfectly polished armor plates. He distantly felt his breath fall short when the faceplate came up and intense glowing eyes were directed his way.

He would have done something incredibly stupid like squeal had he any less control over his body.

Do not think about disassembling the armor manually and peeling off the suit, piece by piece, with bare hands.

Do. Not. Go. There.

Bucky was man enough to admit he was the tiniest bit turned on. So sue him.

"Care for a ride?" Iron freaking Man asked him. Him!

Bucky nodded automatically, speechless. Oh no, why did he do that? God, he was _not_ prepared and no amount of Winter Soldier training will ever prepare him for this.

"Let's go crash Hammer's presentation to celebrate me not dying, come on!" There was definitely an upbeat tone to the armor's mechanical voice modulator that was very good to hear after so many weeks of stress but it wasn't enough to distract Bucky from the dire question of how does one _ride_ Iron Man.

Like, not that way. Mind. Gutter.

Tony took the choice from Bucky when he scooped him by the waist with his right arm, pressed Bucky deliberately to the front of the armor until he was practically standing on the jet boots and leaning his whole body weight against the chest plate. The armor's servos compressed and locked Bucky tightly against the suit in a secure hold and then Tony lifted them into the air with a burst of the repulsors like it was nobody's business.

It was never going to stop blowing Bucky's mind the fact that Tony had gone ahead to design a revolutionary weapon, powered by an arc reactor with the destructive force of hundreds of missiles and, somewhere along the way, decided to use that ingenious weapon as an instrument of flight instead. Or had it been the other way around?

How does one even conceive the sheer genius of it all?

And there must be something wrong with Bucky because he really needed Iron Man's gauntlets, revolutionary weapons of destruction that they were, to just keep gripping the jut of Bucky's hipbone like that and just keep holding him close for like, forever. Or, you know, for Tony to just keep touching him. Period.

They took off into the night sky at a dizzying speed and Bucky had the sudden thought that he should probably be feeling cold or something but there was nothing coursing through his veins but adrenaline and unadulterated heat. The good stuff.

He hung on for dear life and swore with feeling, "Oh, _fuck me_ sideways."

Bucky was pretty sure that Tony almost dropped him right then and there in surprise, but the resulting spontaneous mid-air somersault just made Bucky whoop louder in pure delight.

***

The soldier in Bucky had thought Pepper Potts was the most intimidating woman he had ever met and, considering he had at one point been the unlucky mentor to a dozen pre-adolescent mini-widows, it was a high compliment indeed. She was the Winter Soldier of the corporate world, able to crumble entire business empires in cold blood and leaving all pertinent financial records as evidence behind in an act of absolute legal efficiency.

Bucky had thought it was eerie how she was able to do all that while wearing sharp stiletto heels. He wasn't sure even he was capable of that, but he thought it would be worth trying one of these days as an advanced intimidation tactic.

In contrast, Happy Hogan was the least imposing head of security Bucky had ever had the pleasure of knowing. Which was just fine since Bucky had been trying to steal the man's job title ever since he started working at Stark Industries. Luckily for Happy's career prospects, Bucky had quickly realized that there was no need to get a higher job placement to be allowed to follow Tony around and protect him whenever he went.

All one needed was Jarvis' seal of approval.

There, done, happy stalking.

There is, however, something terrible about James Rhodes that made the soldier in him want to hiss at the man like a spooked cat. Something wicked to the core. Bucky just could not understand how a man could gather so much wrongness on his person like Rhodes was able to do just by idly standing there.

Standing there wearing a defiled and desecrated Iron Man armor and showing it to the whole world like he was proud of it.

It took guts to steal the Iron Man armor in the first place and Bucky respected that, because who wouldn't want to have one for themselves? Not Bucky, that's it, of course. So no, Bucky didn't blame Rhodes for taking one of the extras for himself even though there was much to be improved in his thieving manners.

What was not okay, was to sully the armor with god-damn Hammer tech.

_Shame._

Still, Bucky could not help but feel bad for the guy. He was probably just too naive, too gullible, too set in the restrictive ways of the military to enjoy the freedom of choosing one's own weapons. Imagine only being able to use subpar equipment for every single mission so much so you forget there's a universe of better options out there just waiting for you. Meanwhile, you are stuck with amateur designs, inferior materials and defective engineering. Bucky shuddered, it was frankly the stuff of nightmares.

Bucky had enough empathy left in him to visit the backstage of that trainwreck that was the Hammer presentation in search of Rhodes, and offer the man a consoling pat on the shoulder as he walked by.

"I'm so sorry." Bucky professed his sincere condolences gravely, then shook his head in genuine sadness, "Who _hurt_ you?"

He tore his eyes away from the pitifully confused look that Rhodes shot his way. It was better if he didn't know, if he stayed in blissful ignorance.

Bucky did not have enough sympathy in his heart to help Rhodes get back on the right track, on the Stark track. It was the guy's own fault for joining the air force instead of the army.

That's what he got for rooting for the wrong team.

***

Bucky had a problem and it hardly helped that Tony was such an enabler. It didn't help that it was not the kind of addiction Bucky would ever want to quit anyways. It wasn't hurting anyone, except his wallet on the rare occasion he saw something that he just _had_ to have. Which basically meant that Stark Expo, the gosh-darned all year open exhibition, was starting to be bad for his sanity, his blood pressure and his self-control.

The amount of Stark Industries, Iron Man and Tony-themed merchandise being displayed at the booths was mind-boggling.

And sure, Bucky was a weaponry enthusiast and collector of all things lethal but this was the decade of limited-edition hand-painted action figures and freaking ginormous tsum-tsums of doom so, yeah, there went his paycheck.

What a time to be alive.

How was it that Tony was not creeped out when Bucky kept coming back with a bunch of bags with Tony's face plastered all over them was a complete mystery.

In fact, the only instances Tony paid any attention to Bucky's obsessive hoarding at all was when he suddenly noticed a missing piece in the collection and then proceeded to spend all his considerable resources hunting the thing down until Bucky could boast of having the whole set.

Bucky had the suspicion that Tony knew him better than he realized. Mostly because Tony had gotten into the habit of commissioning artwork of himself for their shared spaces that probably had Pepper, and really anyone who visited the house, worried about an unhealthy spike of narcissism.

Bucky did not even bother snatching the paintings for himself anymore. There was something very comforting about being greeted every morning at breakfast by a massive mural of Iron Man flying at you.

***

Bucky regarded Phil Coulson as a kindred spirit. He respected the fact that Coulson had been the only Shield operative who had gone through all the channels of corporate bureaucracy in order to make an actual appointment to talk to someone as important as Tony instead of taking the unspeakably rude shortcut of breaking and entering.

However, their friendly little chats tended to end in all-out war.

The first time Bucky had a conversation with Coulson that hadn't involved some kind of emergency was comparative to a Star Wars fan and a Star Trek fan meeting at a convention and gushing enthusiastically about science-fiction, and then realizing halfway through that they were not talking about the same stuff _at all_.

It was Bucky's introduction to the concept of 'fandom war' which, after half an hour of backhanded sarcasm and veiled insults, came to an abrupt end when the soldier in him started to scream Russian obscenities at the agent's back just as Coulson, one of the most level-headed and professional agents of all time, slammed the door shut on his way out in an act of childish pettiness.

It was the silliest situation he had ever been in and, at the end of the day, completely harmless.

It was the Winter Soldier screaming his totally biased opinion for the whole world to hear with no one daring to silence him.

He had never felt more alive.

***

The Winter Soldier accidentally became a weaponry social media influencer before he even understood what social media was. There was an article in the New York Times titled 'The hired guns of Instagram' which featured him extensively, like he was some kind of big superstar mafioso instead of just a severely time-displaced assassin trying to blend into modern society.

And, dare he say, succeeding.

Apparently, Instagram and other such platforms couldn't legally endorse the marketing of guns but giving one's honest opinion about them while posing for an audience was just fine. Most gun Instagramers were women in sexy outfits holding big guns provocatively. The soldier had done his best to go for the same vibe in order to acclimatize to the times.

Bucky's Instagram career started thus with a photo of himself in tactical gear sprawled on a beat down sofa somewhere in deep Russia, posing his beloved rifle in one hand and a cup of hot chocolate on the other hand as if saluting the camera, looking at the viewer with hair all over his shadowed eyes and a dead stare a mile long. The photo was full of greys and blacks that blended into the blurry background except for the dozens of book covers spread across his lap and the floor.

Red book covers, each and every one of them had a black star printed on them.

The caption wrote: F U #hydra

Which was immediately followed by a series of sporadic tags that looked like they were totally chosen at random. Really though. They had made all the sense at the time to the soldier but to this day Bucky still pitied the hydra technician who had to go through the trouble of decoding that whole lot of nonsense.

About a couple of years later saw Bucky still showing off his extensive collection of guns on Instagram but now there was also a few videos of hardcore parkour from extremely high places that he blamed on getting too caffeinated after sitting still for too long behind the scope, a bunch of memes about AI and robots talking over the world (because they amused Jarvis and it was always good to be on the future overlord's good side), and a collection of Instagram stories that were basically loud rambling tributes to Stark guns, or just, you know, anything Tony Stark.

This past week, however, his Instagram was practically dedicated in full to the newly erected Stark Tower, from bird's eye view photos of the glass exterior to video updates of the progress he had been making in decorating the interior with appropriately themed Stark merchandise.

Always posted with the hashtag #homesweethome.

***

Bucky was officially in paradise.

He just needed to fall from a train, sacrifice his arm to the field of robotics and spend the next seventy or so years dozing in and out of the timeline to get there.

Honestly, he was _so_ due some good times.

The lights were low, and it was just Bucky and Tony in the room which made the atmosphere awfully intimate as Tony grinned at him and spread his arms in a grand gesture, turning around like a concertmaster to the audience. Bucky was mesmerized and he even found himself forgetting the reason they were there for a second, and then reality reasserted itself and Bucky took stock of his surroundings with wide open eyes. His jaw was off its hinges.

They were in Tony's private Armory, which had very well earned the title with capital letters.

Like taken from some science fiction concept art, the white circular room had some kind of visual effect so streamlined that made it look like it went on forever and ever around them. Or maybe it was the result of having the walls lined up with all types of small arms and light weapons as far as the eye could see. From handguns to assault rifles, everything had the stark industries logo proudly displayed like little badges of honor.

And what an honor, holy shit.

Of course, then Tony had to ruin Bucky's precarious composure with a absent-minded wave of the hand, and the walls moved on itself like the outer layer of a revolving door, panels separating, sliding against each other and intertwining seamlessly, somehow ending up leaving him looking at an entire wall covered fully by machine guns.

Bucky hiccupped.

And then covered his mouth with his hand. He did not just _do_ that.

"Oh wait, that's not right, it's been a while, sorry," Tony muttered with a pout and waved again, not giving him even a second to catch his breath.

In three seconds, the circular walls that surrounded Bucky on all sides were suddenly filled with sniper rifles instead, all the models he had owned over his many years and many more he had not believed were real even in his wildest dreams. Tony leaned a hip against one of the display drawers and it opened to show hundreds of telescopic sights lined up in rows like they didn't each cost a small fortune. Another gesture and there in front of Bucky was a showcase of ammunition that looked like the world's most deadly domino art.

"_Oh_." Bucky breathed in silent worship. He was speechless.

Everything was so heavenly beautiful, he wanted to bask in it for all of eternity.

"Also, before I forget," Tony said as he tapped a black tile on the floor with his foot, "Here you go, as requested."

There, dead center in the middle of the floor a black disc slowly raised itself into the air, small spinning blades glinting in the fluorescent lights as two expressive dots lit up on the top of its polished metal plate. It directed its attention to Bucky and slowly made its way half rotating and half sliding until it reached him and bumped gently at his combat boots like it was contemplating shredding them for fun.

It was the Tony-made one of a kind roomba-lawnmower and it was now, apparently, _his_.

"There's no lawn to mow indoors but you can always take it for a walk outside and let it spread its, well, blades." Tony shrugged.

Bucky was overcome with some kind of unknown emotion, hand still covering his mouth and blinking fast, he knelt by the roomba and just poked at it to make sure it was real. The damascus steel blades whirled into motion hesitantly like in greeting and Bucky emitted a sound of utter delight that he didn't even bother to disguise as anything else but cooing.

Tony had toothy smile on his face as he proceeded to show him how to command the room as his own with the holographic interface, and started babbling about how the roomba was both a storage assistant and part of the multi-million security system that could reduce any intruder to dust if someone dared steal from the room.

"Yeah, it's all very much over the top, I know, but everything you see here was the core of my job for many years and I was very good at designing weapons, believe it or not, " Tony was saying, with rare fondness as he looked around, like looking at photos of an ex with nostalgia for the good memories instead of regret for the bad, "I _trust_ you, with my life and with this room, because you saved me twice when I didn't even know what being saved even meant. And I know who you are, at least I think I do, and I know your moral compass is probably screwed to hell and back, and somehow, I just know, I know you trust me, because for some reason you believe my moral compass is not as screwed as yours. You'd be surprised though, I'd say we are pretty much alike in that regard, but it's just nice having someone believe in me so fully. Makes me feel like, for once, I lived to expectations."

Tony's voice was soft and hushed, full of some indecipherable feeling that made Bucky's heart stutter as he listened. He clung to those words, drowning in them, a little piece of Tony he got to keep to himself like the most valuable of possessions.

"_Tony,_" His trust. Oh lord, pray for Bucky's fragile heart, "You are beyond my wildest dreams."

Suddenly Tony coughed and messed with his hair nervously, blush high on his cheeks. He literally ran over to one of the wall panels as if allergic to spontaneous heart-to-heart conversations all the while stammering a bunch of scientific gibberish that totally went over Bucky's head, except for that one bit about the improved ignition mechanisms which was still pretty random amongst the many barrel specifications thrown his way.

Tony moved a compartment with a flourish and Bucky blinked. He could physically feel his mind veering to another tangent and losing track of what else he had been about to say. He was back to being overwhelmed by total weaponized awesomeness.

Was that a giant bazooka? That was totally a giant bazooka.

"Hey Bucky, come check the Stark-zooka." Tony waved at him with a huge grin on his face.

Bucky was in paradise and his God was a dork.

***

There was another file somewhere in the Shield archives, on the other side of the alphabetically organized cabinet, that contained the profile assessment for the once infamous Winter Soldier. The last page thus ended with the note 'Winter Soldier: Maybe - Bucky Barnes: Oh Hell No' followed by a handwritten:

:)

It was lopsided.

**Author's Note:**

> Credits to Kella for the 'Yes. So much yes. All the yes.', which I shamelessly yoinked. Credits also to 'The hired guns of Instagram', real article by Vox. Please go replace the girls in the photos with Bucky, it's beautiful. Also, go replace the lead singer of 'Three Days Grace - The Good Life' with Bucky too just because~
> 
> Throw me kudos and comments like Instagram tags~ I'll decode them :3


End file.
